10 Best Decisions the LIRR Ever Made?

Earlier tonight I was trying to think of some of the best decisions the Long Island Rail Road has ever made and I thought I would get some input here.

So, in your opinion, what decision do you think is among the 10 best decisions the LIRR has ever made? It can be a decision from any point in the LIRR's history (from the 1800's to today), but the more recent the better (I'm thinking in particular the LIRR in the post-war era, but anything goes). Try to stay away from decisions involving Penn Station since that was technically the Pennsylvania Railroad's thing.

Hindsight is 20/20 and we can sit here and talk for months about all of the bad decisions the LIRR has made, so let's stay away from that conversation (for now) and just stick with the good things.

I will compile a list of everyone's responses and, depending how many responses I get by 1pm Friday, I will either publish the list later this afternoon or sometime over the weekend (I want to give enough people the chance to come up with their own ideas before looking at the list and 'cheating' off others).

There is a link below to a submission form which will allow you to jot down your answer and send it straight to the spreadsheet, or you can reply to this post below, send me a PM, e-mail, or whatever. I will take everything I get from external sources (post replies, PMs, e-mail, etc.) and put it into the spreadsheet manually so there is no need to submit something twice. You can submit as many suggestions as you'd like, I just ask that you submit each response separately if you are using the form (after you submit your first response you will see a link to submit another one).

Link to submission form

The one I can think of off hand is eliminating dangerous grade crossings. Specifically, the Herricks Road crossing in Mineola was long overdue and only a tragic accident got the ball rolling for the LIRR to eliminate that crossing. Rush hour traffic backups coinciding with the numerous trains had always been a commuting headache.

Frankie

Probably the best decisiion was the establishment of cab signals and train control, had it been in general use before it was it could have prevent at least a couple very nasty mishaps.
Another improvement but not as important as the first one I mentioned here was the extensions of electrification to both Huntington and Ronkonkoma.
Noel Weaver

The purchase of the EMD fleet back in 1975.
KRO52

Complete elevation and grade crossing elimination of the Babylon Branch from 1933-1980. Reason why is all the traffic along the South shore, the fact the branch is the perennial leader as the busiest on the railroad, has the most riders, and not to aside from Herricks Road in Mineola on the Main Line, the branch had several hazardous crossings: Franklin Avenue, N Village Avenue, Grand Avenue, Henry Street, Babylon Turnpike, Merrick Avenue, Newbridge Road, Centre Avenue, Bedford Avenue, Bellmore Avenue, Wantagh Avenue, Hicksville Road, Broadway (Massapequa), all 3 grade crossings in Massapequa Park (Park Boulevard, Cartwright Boulevard, and Unqua Road), Broadway/Rt. 110, Great Neck Road, Wellwood Avenue, Delaware Avenue, and Deer Park Avenue.

Electrification to Babylon, Huntington and Ronkonkoma.

Replacement of liftup-window non-air-conditioned coaches with sealed-window air-conditioned coaches in 1955-1956.

lirr42 wrote:
So, in your opinion, what decision do you think is among the 10 best decisions the LIRR has ever made? It can be a decision from any point in the LIRR's history (from the 1800's to today), but the more recent the better (I'm thinking in particular the LIRR in the post-war era, but anything goes). Try to stay away from decisions involving Penn Station since that was technically the Pennsylvania Railroad's thing.

Technically, West Side Yard is not within Penn Station nor did it involve the PRR. Therefore, I say building the West Side Yard facility was the best decision.

How about the C-420 purchase, built right in New York State.

Here's the final list of the 10 Best Decisions the LIRR Ever Made (in no particular order):
http://www.thelirrtoday.com/2014/02/the ... -made.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

• Babylon Branch Grade Crossing Elimination
• Ordering the M1 Fleet
• Electrification of the Ronkonkoma Branch
• Merging South Side Railroad and Flushing & North Shore Railroads into the LIRR
• Going to all high-level platforms
• Initializing Dual Mode service
• Constructing West Side Yard
• Getting The Franchise to dig a tunnel under the East River
• Moving the Cannonball to depart form Penn Station
• Beginning East Side Access

Selling off the freight to a private franchise where the carloads have now doubled since startup in 1997.

freightguy wrote:Selling off the freight to a private franchise where the carloads have now doubled since startup in 1997.

I have mixed feelings on that one. Since NY&AR has taken over, they have lost a lot of customers on eastern Long Island (there is practically 0 freight customers on the Port Jefferson and Montauk Branches anymore). Their traffic might be picking up, but they're delivering to fewer and fewer customers. It would be nice to see them expand freight ops all across the island instead of just increasing loads to a handful of customers.

The customers that were lost were lost for a reason; while it would be nice to say that there's a diversified amount of service on each branch of the railroad, at the end of the day it was/would continue to be a royal pain to run all the way out to Southold or Port Jefferson to spot 2 loads and nothing more. As has been said elsewhere, sometimes when not enough traffic is around rail is just not economically efficient, and as freightguy says above, carload count is through the roof compared to the pathetic amount that was moved by LI in early 1997. Just look at the number of cars in Fresh Pond on any given day.

Poscillico, Coastal, Wally World, BRT as a whole, and countless other customers on the Bush and Lower Montauk are all new customers that have expanded freight ops since takeover, just to name a few.

I'd have to agree with Noel about the adoption of cab signals. From an operational and safety standpoint, I think cab signals would be A#1 on the list of best decisions ever made by the Company. Second would have to be electrification east of Jamaica. Central Branch electrification, in my opinion, should go hand in hand with the Ronkonkoma Double track. But I don't think we will see that for a while.